It seems that everyone wants the “Big Deals”.  You know, those significant huge contracts that you see the top people in your industry land with apparent ease, and that too often seem to elude you.  The ones worth mega-bucks, but that take what can feel like forever to land.

Let’s look at how big deals work.  When a company first hears that one of the sales people has a shot at a huge contract, there is generally a great deal of excitement and interest from everyone on a sales team (quite often accompanied by a little envy from some of the other sales people, or the buddies at the local watering hole).

You get as much information as you can right up front, and then you respond as quickly as possible with your best foot forward, in order to prove to this potential customer how efficient you are and how impressive your proposals can be.

The customer comes back and asks you a few questions,,, a very good sign… that you answer quite effectively. You practically have the deal already.  You even start spending the commission revenues in your mind, if not in real life.

And then . . . . . . . . . you wait . . . . . . . . . .  And you wait . . . . . . . . . . . . . And you wait some more.  You keep in touch with your contacts, and they continue to assure you that things are looking good.  It just has to go through “proper channels”.

One month passes.  Then two months. And you wait.  You hear a rumor that your chief competition is also confident that they will win this proposal.  But your contacts assure you that things look good.  And you wait some more.

Then a third month passes . . . . . . . . . . and you wait some more.  By this time, your contacts are saying “We’ll call you when we know.”

When you finally do hear the result, you have either lost it, or you get it, but with many new stipulations that change your profitability dramatically.  You still accept them, because this was such a significant contract for you in the first place.

Yet what was once a great opportunity has now turned into a difficult and burdensome situation.  Isn’t that how many huge contracts go?  In our experience, we see far too many that go just that way.  It kills off just a little of your human spirit each time it occurs, and cynicism starts to creep in.  Why bother going after big deals at all, right?

So what do you do?  How do you change this?

The Missing Link

In most “big deals”, the missing link is an active focus on the relationship and I don’t mean just the golf games, though in some cases, that may be part of it. 

There are four levels of relationships.  They are:
1) Professional
2) Personal
3) Structural
4) Power

A professional relationship (the first level in business) is a relationship where the customer has enough faith in you, your products, your services, the promises you make, his/her perception of your ability to keep your promises, etc. that commerce occurs.

After this, as time goes on, you eventually get to know your customer more personally. He or she gets to know you as well, and you each discover your common interests. You come to trust each other’s levels of commitment.

The third level of relationship is “structural”.  That is, where you actually become part of your customer’s method of doing business.  You don’t get most of their business, and you don’t just get to quote it every time. 

You are that part of the business for them.  In fact if your competitor approaches them, they either chuckle with you about it, or they send the competitor to you to determine whether your competitor’s products are something you might recommend.

The fourth level of relationship is “power”.  This is where the structural relationship ceases to be with one individual (you), but grows to include anyone in your organization.  There is usually such a consistency in levels of product or service delivery that the customers don’t care whether it is you or someone else who serves them, as long as it is someone from your firm.

Relationships

You always need a relationship sufficient to do commerce. 

This is not simply a turn of phrase describing a sales cycle.  A sales cycle follows the seller’s agenda, which is… to sell!  Our observation is that very few people like to be “sold”.  However, most people like to buy things and services.

In the best buying processes, the buyer is left to decide whether they would like to buy; the seller focuses on developing a relationship sufficient to do commerce, rather than focusing on the commerce itself.

The whole notion, as it applies to “big deals” is to slow the process down, in order to speed the result. along.  With this alternate focus, you will get farther faster, by slowing the process in the early stages.

By focusing on relationships rather than on the deals, we routinely see closing ratios go from 20 – 30% to 80% and higher.  This process works particularly well in larger custom-built solutions for clients and customers (i.e. “Big Deals”).